Finding the Green within the Grey

Whooshing Down that Mountain

Is there time enough to learn how to twist wires into a shape of myself?

A Facebook friend asked via post, “How do I slow down time?”

By capturing sunlight on your face and noticing it.

OK, really, I can’t slowdown time. This week, I read a few lines in a novel by Julia Keller that talked about how the way down the mountain is always faster on the way up, like how the second half of life speeds up. As our kids grow up, we bemoan this speeding up. I posted that I don’t know how to slow down time, all I have learned to do is to spend more time with my family.

Lately when my 12-year-old hugs me, I stay there in that hug until she lets go. Sunlight floods my body.

I think of this girl and how I could spend an entire day hugging her. I look at this wire replica of herself she made in her 5th grade classroom. Last night, she had a homework meltdown. As she curled up in my lap (as well as she can as she now is just half a head shorter than me), I asked her, why all the tears?

“Because I’m not good enough,” she answered.

My words flew back at her and I asked her how someone who just received a report card filled with A’s and B’s couldn’t be good enough.

“But I get those with help,” she said.

Oh honey, yes, you have accommodations. Dammit, the comparison game is so easy to play. Aren’t those kids who don’t have learning difference accommodations smarter than me? I tell her smart is just a funny word and society places many definitions on it. But mostly I just hold her, cancel homework for the rest of the night while thinking up a million ways to convince her she’s enough.

But still and yet, mostly I just focus on spending time with this girl. I keep her up late, watching “Cheers” with my husband and me. While tucking her in, we talk about exchanging negative self-talk with positive self-talk. Yet in a place that’s untouched by this lingo, I know the best medicine for our hurts is love and being together. Maybe this time together will involve colored wires that I learn to twist into a stick figure rendition of myself. Maybe not. Either way, that ride down the second half of the mountain is speeding up.

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Nancy Schatz Alton

I used to ride the playground ponies — painted metal creature swings behind my childhood home — and dream of a book with my name on it: Nancy Schatz. Years later, I walked that same playground and young girl asked me my age. Maybe I was 19. Shocked, she asked if I was married. Nope, not yet, I laughed in reply.

Now I’m married and my body’s pretty close to being 50 years old. My first dream came true with one minor adjustment. The name on the cover of those books is “Nancy Schatz Alton.” I think it took writing these two holistic healthcare guides — The Healthy Back Book and The Healthy Knees Book — to believe I really am a writer. But I’ve been a writer before I could pencil the alphabet on the itchy lined paper in Kindergarten. It’s just who I am.

I wear many other definitions. I’m lucky enough to be a mom to a teenager and a tween. I’m a freelance writer, editor and writing teacher and coach, too. I’m a baker and a short-order cook, an off-key singer and car dancer. I’m a former long distance runner, an avid reader and a lover of color. I’m also a spy, because writers are spies, right?

This blog was born a few years ago when I finally got tired of denying myself the privilege of having a blog. I love sharing my words, and if these thoughts can help someone else, even better. As this blog has evolved, some of what I have written is part of a memoir manuscript entitled “But Still and Yet: Navigating the Learning Differences World with My Daughter.” That’s the tale of being and becoming a mother. No, it’s not the story of my first child’s birth and how I stepped into this new role, although there are many fine books about this very topic. This memoir is about learning to embrace the idea that life doesn’t always get to be easy for our offspring. If you aren’t a parent, the journey I take is the same journey all humans take during this lifetime. This memoir answers this question: how do we crack ourselves open to become our best possible selves?

Boom. Enjoy my blog. Say hello via a comment if you have can. And Welcome to Within The Words, Finding the Green within the Grey,.

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